


Dead Bodies

by Aaron_The_8th_Demon



Series: God Damn Apocalypse [1]
Category: Van Helsing (TV 2016)
Genre: Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-08-04 04:04:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16339454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aaron_The_8th_Demon/pseuds/Aaron_The_8th_Demon
Summary: Days in the life of Sergeant Axel Miller, between the Rising and Vanessa's reawakening.





	1. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t scrub the blood from the walls.

**Author's Note:**

> Based on two prompts from a list on Tumblr: https://charleighwrites.wordpress.com/2018/10/09/writing-prompts-to-inspire-you-this-halloween/
> 
> The title of each chapter is the prompt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I gave Ted the last name Browning. Because nobody in his military unit would call him by his fucking first name. I only did JROTC and even I know that. Fucking TV writers.

 

Apparently, United States Marine Corps now translates to “cleaning crew,” because that’s what they’re doing. Moving outwards, from the fourth floor lab, they’re trying to erase all signs of what took place here. Maybe set up a temporary shelter in this area of the hospital until reinforcements arrive.

The coroner wants them to try and wash the bodily fluids and whatever all else off the walls, the floor, the ceiling. After the massacre on their first day here, potentially infectious materials are all fucking over the place, and Axel’s already sick of it. Today is day two.

Major Stoker hasn’t come back or contacted them, and with her, Kowalski and Tucker are missing as well. All the doctors and staff have left. So have the patients, too… at least the ones that weren’t killed by the not-people. So it’s Axel, his squad and his platoon sergeant, guarding a dead body and the coroner working on her.

Gomez and Smitty are verbally taking shots at each other while they work, but Axel’s not going to stop them because it probably helps to have a distraction during this shit. Staff Sergeant Browning is in the lab, asking the doctor about… something. Meanwhile, Axel’s trying to mop blood off the fucking ceiling, because it “might be infectious.” And how the _fuck_ did blood get on the _ceiling_ in the first place?

The two of his squad still left have those string mops and are working on the floor, and Axel’s been given a flat mop. The fucking thing keeps flipping over when he moves it and he’s about to fucking give up on this shit. Does it really matter if there’s blood on the ceiling? It’s not like they’re going to stay here forever.

He gives up, and moves on to the nearest wall. The mop is actually better for this than for the ceiling - probably because he can actually brace his weight into it and get some pressure. Red dribbles down in lines, but after a few minutes Axel can see he’s still getting nowhere. All this is doing is smearing the blood around, not getting the sticky spots up, making a bigger mess.

He stops to have a cigarette and notes that he’s only got half a pack left. He’ll have to do something about that.

Browning comes over - they have to do something about the bodies. Smitty and Gomez can keep up the useless scrubbing, but there’s a pile of corpses out in the hall that need to be taken care of. They can’t go outside, though, so there needs to be another solution. Axel suggests chucking the bodies off the roof, but his platoon sergeant disagrees. It’ll draw attention to them, it’s unhygienic, and do they _really_ want to carry twenty dead people up to the roof?

Well, there’s got to be something else they can do - maybe body bags. If the bags are closed, then the rotting flesh will be contained, no harm done.

Looking around, they find no body bags, but they do come across a large garbage chute that seems like the best option. And now comes the shitty part, because they have to drag all those bodies in full combat gear and carrying rifles because the location’s not completely secure.

Axel’s never had to bury anyone before. This isn’t really burial, but close enough. It’s a strange feeling, especially since he doesn’t even know any of their names.

The blood on the bodies is all dried up, but the sticky residue still smears across their digies and tac gear in brown smudges. It takes an hour to dump just three corpses, because the hall’s not long but they’re weighed down by all their shit and dead people are heavier than they look, even skinny ones. By the end of said hour, Axel’s sweat is soaking through his uniform and his LBE belt is chafing his hips. It makes his skin sticky and disgusting, like he’s one of the bodies they’re dumping and should get thrown down the chute himself.

Going back to get number four, they stop - noise. There’s noise coming from somewhere.

It’s incredible how even in a huge institutional building the simple absence of people makes sound carry. Browning radios the others, telling Gomez to switch with Axel. The two of them will do a sweep and Axel will guard the lab with Smith.

It sure fucking beats hauling bodies, so Axel heads back without complaining. He ends up pacing, scoping out the inner laboratory area, making notes of the possible means of ingress. A door in the back corner - he asks the doctor where the stairs lead to.

Straight down to the ambulance garage, straight up to the roof.

Excellent. It could be a great backup escape route. So now, Axel asks her what’s going on with the dead woman. Is he allowed to ask, or will she start biting heads off like she did yesterday when they showed up?

She starts talking a little about strange pathologies - whatever the hell that even means - and how dead bodies don’t act the way this one does. And he’s just a jarhead, why does he care?

Well, they could be stuck here for a few days, maybe even a couple weeks until reinforcements come. It makes sense for him to at least know what’s going on, that way they can give a complete sitrep once they bring Sleeping Beauty back to base in Portland.

Doc gives him this look, like something about him personally offends her but she’s not sure what. In response, Axel just grins his best grin at her - she’s the one who called in the body to the Navy doctor in the first place, so it’s on her that he’s even here.

She shakes her head. All she’s interested in right now is that she’s stuck here with them, and there’s those _things_ out there which could come in and rip them to pieces at any time if they want to. So he can help best by promising to fucking shoot her if she ever gets bit by one of them, since the pathology is spread through bites like rabies.

Now, Axel’s smile turns cynical. He answers that yeah, he’ll do it, but she’s gotta promise to do the same for him if it comes to that. Because that’s not something he wants, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The thing with the mop is because I used to work in a hospital sterilizing the OR. We were required to mop the ceiling and walls as well as the floor and to clean all the rooms even if some hadn't gotten used that day. It's very, very clean there. In any case, Doc probably would be concerned about pathogens, so I totally see her making the marines scrub blood off the ceiling in revenge for trapping her there with them.
> 
> Military slang: "digies" is the nickname for their combat uniforms, short for digital camouflage. They don't really say fatigues so much anymore (at least that's how I understand it).


	2. It was over in a flash and there was nothing I could do.

 

Even in these circumstances, Axel doesn’t think there’s an excuse for anything he’s done. Doc got bit - of course Doc got bit - and he promised he’d shoot her. Of course he couldn’t do it. Because he’s a fucking marshmallow. He still wants to save Doc, even though she’s beyond saving by now and he fucking knows it.

She couldn’t just stay strapped to that stretcher. Eventually she would’ve gotten free, gone after him, probably killed him in the end. And that’s an instant mission failure, just like in a video game, except he can’t just hit _Escape_ and start over from the last save point. There’s no save points here, but god-al-fucking-mighty does he wish there was.

So instead of waiting for that to happen, Axel’s now carrying her into the pharmacy cage after smashing her in the face with the stock of his rifle to knock her out. He feels sick at himself for doing it.

How the fuck did things end up like this, anyway?

Axel doesn’t even remember the rushing around, frantic grabbing for a bonesaw and then his rifle. He remembers feelings - shock, panic, despair. An overwhelming sense of doom. Just the moment when Doc actually turned into one of those _things._ It’s almost a flash in his mind, like waking up, as she whispered his name one last time before snapping her jaws and howling, trying to get free and murder him like he hasn’t spent the last thirty months keeping her alive and safe.

Now, with the despair, is this feeling of helplessness. There’s nothing he can do to fix the situation. He’s waiting for Ted to make it back. Waiting. Always waiting. They waited on reinforcements for two and a half fucking years, but it was all four of them. Now, there’s only Axel, sitting among a sea of homemade traps with a dead woman on a table and an undead woman in a cage. He thinks maybe the universe is laughing at him, sometimes.

He can’t stand the helplessness of it. So instead, as he paces and patrols and checks the generator on the roof and works on Wanda and comes up with new gadgets to murder intruders, Axel convinces himself: he’s waiting. He’s just waiting, not helpless. He needs to wait for Ted to get back, Ted’s a platoon sergeant, Ted can help Axel figure this shit out. They’ll get the situation squared away again.

But in those dark moments, on the really long fucking nights when he’s just smoking and thinking and listening to the vampire-things marauding in the streets below, Axel remembers how twelve years ago, he’d said the same words to himself. That his sister wasn’t really gone. He was just waiting for her to come back to him.

Why does this have to be so familiar?

These terrible moments happen to him, and then either he’s not around to see it or just can’t remember how things went down, which means he’s sitting on his ass and waiting for his life to magically fix itself.

It’s why he became a marine, isn’t it? So that he’s better and stronger than he was as the idiot kid who lost his sister. So that he’s more in control of things. So that he can keep his shit together for once. But it’s still turning out the same awful way as it always does. Axel has no say in anything.

Now, as he’s locking the door, Axel tries to shake the ideas that are mentally crushing him. He thinks - how can he keep Doc safe, now? Yeah, she’s in the cage, but… vampires don’t exactly eat MREs and canned soup. The solution is staring him in the face, and he fucking hates it. It’s so ugly and kind of disgusting, because for thirty months it’s been his job to shoot those fuckers. Not that he’s counting or anything. And now he’ll be sustaining one of these monsters, who used to be someone he had feelings for… still has feelings for.

And Axel looks around for a needle and an infusion tube.

How did his life end up like this?

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave kudos/comments.
> 
> If you enjoyed this work, please feel free to check out my original WIP, [Nucleus](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10027367).


End file.
